In each area, we work on a specific target to improve provision for pupils at school.

In Leadership and Management, our actions revolved around applying for Teaching Schools status to enable Tranmere to take over from Bramhope Primary as the lead school for the Noctua Teaching School Alliance. As you know, we were successful, and from September, I will be leading Noctua for a day or two each week with Mrs Hodgson acting as Headteacher in my absence. My work for Noctua has brought in over £40,000 of funding for Tranmere and will continue to be a highly beneficial partnership in many ways for Tranmere Park.

In Teaching, Learning and Assessment, our main action was the introduction of the new Assessment system which I have already mentioned in blog #1! In addition to this, we have also introduced a new ‘mastery’ approach to the teaching of mathematics which has been extremely successful in enabling the children to be fully prepared for a different approach to mathematics in the new National Curriculum and a new testing regime in Y2 and Y6.

In the Pupil Development strand, we introduced a new ‘Learning Behaviours’ section to our pupil mentoring system which lets parents and pupils know which aspect of learning behaviour a child may need to work on to become the most effective learner they can be.

Finally – Outcomes for Pupils. Our actions here draw on a Governor Aspiration for our pupil’s outcomes to be in the top 10% nationally. We met this aspiration in 2014/15 and our outcomes for this year lead us to believe that we will be up there again for 2015/16! Our EYFS pupils did us proud with 89% making a Good Level of Development – this is anticipated to be amongst the highest in Leeds. Our Y1 pupils built on their success with an amazing 100% meeting the required standard for the Y1 Phonics Check – again, this will be at the top of league tables! In Y2, the children did fantastically well, coping brilliaintly with the new, more challenging tests: 93% of pupils met the expected standard in reading, 90% in writing and an amazing 97% of pupils met the standard in maths. Again – we expect these results to be amongst the best in Leeds. Finally, our Y6 pupils. They SMASHED their SATS tests and achieved results which are the 3rd highest in Leeds! Yay!91% of pupils met the expected standard in reading, 96% in writing, 92% in grammar and a phenominal 98% in maths. Brilliant!

So – Tranmere Park goes on from strength to strength. I’m so lucky to have an amazing staff team who go the extra mile every day for our pupils. Thank you SO much to all our fantastic staff.

We’re also saying goodbye to a few people this year: Mrs Richardson, Miss Lancaster and Mrs Murley are all leaving us on Friday – we wish them all the very best in their new roles. We’re also very lucky to have Mrs Martin who looks after the children so well in her role as Learning Mentor. Mrs Martin has clocked up an incredible 25 years at Tranmere Park so we’re throwing her a little party this week to say ‘Well Done’ for putting up with us all for a quarter of a century! Mr Beech is due to become a dad for the first time too over the summer so our very best wishes to him and his wife as they start their family.